Sunday, 20 January 2013

It is snowing as I type so no chance of getting out into the garden at all and so my thoughts this morning, on what can only be described as a very quiet Sunday are turning to Craters, the sequel to Crater* and the second book dealing with what will happen to humankind several hundred years from now if we have to abandon Earth and live on Mars. If you haven't read Crater* then I should warn you now, what follows will contain spoilers...(spoiler alert!)

So now I have three settings for my characters, Earth, Mars and the crater ship ' The Leeward', heading for The Saturn Relays. And my thoughts are focused on Earth as I have to come up with a global transport system for the small communities still living here and separated by vast distances. So how do you travel across continents and oceans (no teleportation devices or wormhole technology in my sci-fi version of our future yet...) without relying on traditional fossil fuels or complex technology requiring large numbers of people and yet make it fast and easy enough for one person to use?
I am very drawn to the idea of flying saucers, always the preserve of visiting Martians to Earth and fun to base them as the main transport on earth instead but how to propel them? Jet propulsion systems as seen in nature in cephalopods such as cuttlefish are always intriguing. (Not to mention the lovely referencing of Jules Verne's ship, The Nautilus. ) But can you apply water-based technology to air? I think this afternoon is going to be spent looking into fluid dynamics, jet streams and rotary screw compression...